Province Specialization Balance

[Epanastatis]

Have any of you noticed if you promote your women up to Matriarch consistently you get 5% empire maintenance reduction and a massive %culture income modifier?

That's led me to move my capital (Antioch) to a culture-based province due to the empire-wide 100+% culture income regardless of what's in the province.

Which province did you move to?

[ablebodie]

I was unclear in my wording. By "move to" I mean I rebuilt what used to be a Commerce-based province towards a Culture-based one. It was a massive jump in income.

[Nordling]

I was unclear in my wording. By "move to" I mean I rebuilt what used to be a Commerce-based province towards a Culture-based one. It was a massive jump in income.

How exactly do you build a culture-based province? I have never done that. Can you specify pls?

[ablebodie]

The below links are honga and therefore out of date, but they should explain pretty clearly the gist of what I built. Syria is my template, but it is flexible in that it would also work in any 4-province region with one or more ports.

Antioch should have a Commerce port, Hippodrome, Satrap's Palace, and Alytarches. The rural provinces I just went for the Commerce version of their production building (the one with banditry and commerce income, less resource production). There's a +Culture income version called the Stadia which increases culture income dramatically as well as PO. The Alytarches + Governor handle sanitation & banditry very handily, and your Hippodrome and Stadia handle PO. You have a spare slot in the non-resource province with whatever you want that does -banditry, +sanitation, possibly +culture income.

So that's it. I don't have exact income numbers because it's still being built, but I have +180% culture income just from having 3 Matriarchs and one rank 3 female politician, plus a governor in Syria itself. Your income is mostly based on culture, but the commerce focus gives a hefty boost as well. Thracia is a good candiate for this strategy as well, as its Trained Slave resource generates both culture income as well as +% culture income, rather than the industry/commerce/agriculture split you usually see from resource chains.

Part of this conflicts with the fact the Lv5 Temple "Paradise of Daphne" is basically a Culture Conversion + PO + troop recruitment building in DeI. As I understand it was a massive public park/garden and the Roman propaganda at the time was "they have sex in public in there!". Troop recruitment cost reduction is definitely funny in that light, but where's the sex tourism!?